Chapter 2

A few days have passed since I planted the sweet potatoes. My crops were growing steadily and I had spent the majority of the day planting some “green manure” in a patch of land that was unused in this years rotation. I had a habit of doing this, because it maintained the unused soil’s fertility and kept both weeds and pests at bay.

My father had taught me the importance of preserving the usability of unused soil at a young age. Apparently there was a time, where the majority of my family’s land was sterile and my grandfather and father were forced to sustain and closely cultivate small patches of land, in an effort to generate a satisfactory yield. While I could never imagine a time where our land was so lifeless, I wasn’t about to grant a return to such dark times, by allowing a plot of land to stagnate.

After planting the cover crop, I called it a day and made my way back to the farmhouse to wash and unwind. I stepped through the front door and noticed a white envelope a few inches away from being at the mercy of my muddy boots. I wiped the dirt from my hands on my overalls and bent down to pick up the envelope.

There weren’t many people in the village that could read and write and I only ever received correspondence from my former school teacher, who also happened to be the current innkeeper and Astoria’s mother.

I broke the seal on the envelope and read the letter. It was an invitation. The penmanship was elegant and after perusing the contents of the letter, I was certain that it was from Mrs Gastwirt. She would occasionally invite me to dinner at the Inn. She was worried about how I spent more time working on the farm, than I did mingling and socialising with the other villagers.

It wasn’t because I was attempting to avoid other people. I just prefer to spend my time cultivating the farm and continuing the log my father had created when he inherited ownership from my grandfather.

Despite my reluctance, I decided that I would attend. Mrs Gastwirt always treated me like family and would occasionally send me books that she had received from the travelers and merchants that lodged at her Inn.

I was supposedly her favourite student, because whenever I read or learnt something, I would never forget it. On one sunday, during the show and tell portion of the class, I left her gobsmacked, when I recited the entire contents of my father’s log for the previous week word for word. I had initially planned to read from the neatly bound book directly, but she wanted to see if I was able to do it from memory, I was.

I placed the envelope on the counter and went to go and wash. She requested that I come round this coming sunday. It had been a while since I ventured beyond the comfort of the farm and I don’t think I had any formal clothing that still fit, but I suppose I could look through my father’s wardrobe and see if I could use some of his formal attire.

After washing the muck and grime from my body and making sure to clean the dirt from under my fingers, I went into my father’s room and opened his wardrobe. I made sure to switch the mothballs periodically and ensure that his clothing was kept in perfect order. I would often need to use something from here, parricularly at the time of the harvest moon festival, so it was important that these clothes remained usable.

I pulled a shirt and an old dinner jacket out of the wardrobe. I was certain that I had used them before, but they would probably fit me better now, than they did then. I spotted a pair of matching trousers and reached for them. They seemed to have been stuck on something, so I gave them a good tug and managed to dislodge them. However, as they came out, a small wooden box fell to the ground.

I placed the trousers to one side and reached for the box. It was a fancy looking wooden box and I had only ever seen it once. It had played a big part during the one and only time my father had lost his temper. I had been snooping through his things, looking for anything farming related and I happened upon this wooden box.

Just before I was due to open it, my father rushed in and snatched it from me. I would often snoop around my father’s things, but this was the only time my father had reprimanded me for doing so. He placed the box out of my reach and said that its contents had belonged to my mother and when the time came, he would reveal them to me.

My father never really spoke about my mother, she had supposedly passed away, due to complications at my birth. Although I was curious about anything related to my deceased mother, I was afraid of incurring my father’s wrath and soon forgot about this wooden box.

In spite of my reinvigorated curiosity, I put the box to one side and prepared the clothes for sunday dinner at Gastwirt’s Inn.